World-class heart surgeon Dr. Peter Sutter runs his life with the instinctive precision of a master of the universe. But when he leaves the operating room, the only living thing waiting for him is a golden retriever. Then a chance encounter with an enigmatic woman changes everything.

Exploring the depths of Rosalind’s intoxicating body and captivating spirit, Peter quickly falls under her spell. Miraculously, the feeling is mutual.

But fate is waiting just around the corner. And it might be carrying a lead pipe.

Rosalind is a sensual, witty, moving story about the joy of real love, the surprise and delight of unexpected passion, and the transcendent power of human connection.

Montreal, 1951. Rebecca Wiseman, 18 years old, from a Catholic-Jewish family, lives with her working-class parents. At a local dance, she briefly meets a handsome young man, but has little hope of seeing him again. When Sol Gottesman tracks her down and asks her on a date, her joy mingles with disbelief when she learns he is the son of a wealthy businessman.

Sol takes her in a chauffeured Rolls-Royce to the most expensive restaurant in the city, introducing Rebecca to a world of upper-class wealth and privilege unknown in her working-class family. Despite the usual bumps in any relationship, Rebecca believes her life is perfect.

She soon learns that despite Sol’s outward charm, he lacks self-confidence. On a visit to Mount Royal overlooking the city, Sol reveals the simmering conflicts in his family and his fears that his brother plans to drive him out of the family business. Rebecca’s wants to protect Sol, but helping him stand up to the pressure from his family, puts her squarely in the midst of it all.

“Second Chances may be an issue-laden novel, but it weaves these issues seamlessly into the book by virtue of the strength of Cole’s characters. The novel manages to be both entertaining and eye-opening. It will make you feel more socially aware and connected by book’s end.”
– SPR
“Second Chances leads the readers on a roller coaster of emotions while simultaneously reflecting on problems that face today’s society”
– IndieReader

“It makes you dream of a better world for us all; one where we are not defined by race or gender, but rather by our skills and capabilities. One where we all get along as equals, irrespective of race or status.”
– Faridah Nassozi, Reader’s Favorite

BOOK DESCRIPTION: Nichole, a young black woman, is caught in a tough position. She is juggling too many responsibilities as her world falls apart around her. When her mother turns up missing while performing an errand, Nichole is left picking up the pieces of her shattered life and taking care of her younger siblings. She isn’t sure where she can turn to for help, and she is facing a lot of harsh realities about how life works and how much prejudice can hold her back.

Richard is a lawyer who lost himself in corporate law. He wants to help Nichole through her heartbreaking situation, but he makes mistakes and loses her trust. He discovers that he’s been doing the right things for the wrong reasons for a long time. Everything begins to fall apart as he realizes he’s swept problems under the rug for so long he might no longer be able to fix them. After meeting a young alcoholic who is struggling to take control of his life, Richard wakes up to just how far off-course his life has become and attempts to right it. He asks Nichole for a second chance to help her overcome her obstacles, and he hopes it isn’t too late.

Can Nichole and Richard overcome their prejudices and get a Second Chance?

Second Chances is a contemporary novel set in Middle America that delves into Social Issues people deal with on a regular basis. It features a strong female protagonist standing up to the world and pushing back against commonplace wrongs. It tells a hopeful story about facing up to our own prejudices and coming to terms with who we are today, who we want to become, and what it will take to get there.

The well-known film director Vincent Adair arrives in Stilton Fields in the mid-1950’s looking for subject for a movie that will revive his career. He decides to adapt the story of Lydia Bowstreet, a woman who was involved in a 17th century theological controversy and spent her last days in semi-exile in and near Stilton Fields.

“The Opinionists” tells two alternating stories, one about the controversy that Lydia was involved in, another about the making of the film. The novel explores various aspects of the quest for freedom in North America.

This novel is a family saga with several themes: the advantages and troubles of urban life, ambitions for improvement, the struggle to overcome middle-age malaise.

The Wakemans live in a large city in the northeastern U. S. The novel tells about their various attempts to pull themselves out of mental, physical, and spiritual low points. The characters include a professor and his family, a recently retired business man who wants to open a temporary home for underprivileged children, their sister who is a classical musician, and their half brother who wants to be mayor of their city. The story includes three interludes that take place in a society that has gone haywire with technology and the paranormal. One of the characters wonders if reality is disintegrating.

What Inspired You to Write Your Book?
For me, writing fiction has included a touch of experimentation. Each of my stories is different from the others. The “Wakemans” is the only extended improvisation I’ve written. I began writing it without notes or outline. One of the few things I knew when I started was that I would aim for 99 chapters, one short of a hundred, as a sign of imperfection. I began one chapter without knowing what would be in the next one. I revised the manuscript many times and tightened the narrative. I also added three interludes set in a future that is awash in technology gone awry.

Another thing I knew at the start was that I would write mostly about the adult members of a well-established family I eventually decided to call the Wakemans. They don’t resemble any family I know — all the characters are fictitious.

This family is surely my response to various novels I read, in particular Thomas Mann’s “Buddenbrooks”. (Shameless namedropping. I admit.) Anyone who points out a vast gap between Mann’s work and mine will be right. Still, my characters have better prospects than the later generation of Buddenbrooks. This no doubt has to do with the opportunities that many North Americans still see.

It is March, 1649. A court in Botolph sentences a woman to hang for supposedly trafficking with the devil. The old governor of Sagadac does everything he can to stop an outbreak of hysteria as a wave of accusations of witchcraft sweeps over the colony.
The story is based on an isolated case of alleged witchcraft that took place in Massachusetts in the middle of the 17th century.
“Pilhannaw” is an old native word for a bird of prey like an eagle.

What Inspired You to Write Your Book?
I have hoped since I was in the 8th grade that fiction writing would be at the center of my life. I served as a Lao linguist in the American army, stationed for a year and a half in Thailand, during the start of the war in Vietnam. When I left the army, I took a job at a bank across the street from a large, liberal university. Fiction writing was still at the center of my ambitions. Anti-war protests were just starting. Confused beyond words, I decided that the only way I could understand what was going on around me was to examine American history from the time when Europeans arrived in what we now call the northeastern United States. After five years of research and writing, I came up with what I considered a presentable novel. “The Pilhannaw” is my first long work of fiction.

“To be a great lover, you have to shed your armor. To be a great writer, you have to shed your skin.” Frank can’t get past his writing instructor’s words. He’d like to be both, but his autistic childhood, visual impairment, dismissive parents, and narcissistic brother prevent him from being either.

Then on vacation in Hawaii, Frank has what feels like a paranormal experience on the Arizona Memorial that starts him down a path of psychological and spiritual self-discovery. In making the transitions from weird to respected, awkward to insightful, brainy to wise, his relationships with women shift from fearful to erotic, and through them doors open to unexpected opportunities with his writing. Lifting himself from the purgatory to which his past had banished him, he inadvertently helps free those he connects with from their own shadowed depths, making his story the Memoir of an Unlikely Savior.

What Inspired You to Write Your Book?
In a writing class years ago I wrote a “word portrait” of Rene Magritte’s The Mysteries of the Horizon, an interpretation of the person and setting of the painting. Then as a later exercise I wrote a “wrapper” story about the writer of the word portrait and how it reflected his life.

I liked what I’d done and wrote more. I began to connect them into a set of linked short stories. Then I decided that the word portraits themselves were bogging down the read and removed them. The protagonist still wrote word portraits but the content was now only intimated.

Then I read an issue of Time Magazine about autism and realized the autistic nature fit my protagonist. I read books that taught me more about the attributes of an autistic childhood and about how some were able to overcome their limitations.

By then the collection was becoming a unified piece, finding its own life probing the boundaries of social, psychological, and spiritual understanding and how they fit together. My goal became the expansion of these boundaries for the protagonist, the author, and hopefully the reader.

THIS IS A SHORT STORY OF 8,000 WORDS, APPROX.
NOTE: SOME SWEARING.
Catherine is in love with Bill, a man hired by her therapist to help her overcome a phobia. She knows the relationship is wrong, but she can’t break away. Without Bill, she thinks, her life would be too bleak. She drifts along uneasily, telling herself she’s happy. Then disaster strikes . . .

Let It Be is a touching tale of loss, longing, and forgiveness that chronicles the breakup of a marriage, the destruction of a family, and the struggle to come together in the aftermath of what remains.

Searching for the love and happiness she feels she deserves, Michelle Jansen leaves her abusive, overbearing husband behind and takes her two kids to Amarillo, Texas, where she begins to learn how to stand on her own two feet, supporting herself and her children with the money she earns from a low-paying job as she becomes increasingly involved with a coworker who is an even bigger fan of the Beatles than she is.

But Michelle doesn’t realize that her ex-husband is willing to do whatever he can to destroy her new life. When Michelle is betrayed by her very own son, this already fractured family will be damaged in an almost unimaginable way. Can they find forgiveness in the midst of so much sorrow and guilt, or will love give them the strength that they need to let it be?

Part family saga, part coming of age tale, Let It Be is a story intimately linked to the music of the Beatles, a debut novel filled with true-to-life characters who want nothing more than a second chance.

Targeted Age Group: Adults

Book Price: $0.99

Author Bio:
Chad Gayle was born and raised in Texas. A writer and a photographer, Chad has written for literary journals, trade publications, and newspapers, and his fine art photography has been purchased by commercial designers and decorators across the country. Chad has a Masters in English from Texas A&M University, and he taught English at Meredith College in North Carolina and several other small schools before he moved to New York, where he lives with his wife and his two children.

In this gripping debut novel by Andrew Seaward, the lives of three addicts converge following an accidental and horrific death.

Monty Miller, a self-destructive, codependent alcoholic, is wracked by an obsession to drink himself to death as punishment for a fatal car accident he didn’t cause.

Dave Bell, a former all-American track star turned washed-up high school volleyball coach, routinely chauffeurs his bus full of teens on a belly full of liquor and head full of crack.

Angie Mallard, a recently divorced housewife with three estranged children, will go to any lengths to restore the family she lost to crystal meth.

All three are court-mandated to a secluded drug rehab high in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. There, they learn the universal truth among alcoholics and addicts:

Though they may all be sick…SOME ARE SICKER THAN OTHERS.

Targeted Age Group: 17+

Book Price: 0.99

Author Bio:
Andrew Seaward is an award-winning author, actor, and screenwriter. He has written and acted in several independent productions including the critically-acclaimed short film, “Drowning”, which earned the prestigious Award of Merit at the 2010 Indie Fest. Andrew currently resides in Denver, CO, where he is busy at work on his next novel. For more information about Andrew and his projects please visit www.andrewseaward.com.